At the Aalborg Semester, which is the 2nd Semester of the Erasmus MediaAC Master, the focus is on investigating the knowledge and academic discussions on Media Art Heritage and Culture from the first semester in Krems, in the light of practice- and problem-based research methods.

The Aalborg semesters offers teaching in methods of creating, methods of evaluating, experience culture theory, art management and exhibition critique, experience design technologies; all framed by lectures and workshops on the State of the (Media) Art and Media Art in (Design) Contexts.

Creativity and Academic reflection

As a good example of how the semester pushes the students into a more creative and alternative thinking-field, in the course on ‘Methods of Creating‘ (taught by Palle Dahlstedt) the students are asked to produce a small sound-piece from scratch – in the tradition of ‘Musique Concrete’.

The results can be enjoyed here:

2016:

2017:

Semester Student Exhibition

The Aalborg semester is characterized by it’s focus on investigating the variety of different (academic) methods in the study of Media Arts Cultures. The students work in teams and all produce concrete experience designs as part of their semester exam, which contain a practice-based project and a 50-60 pages written paper.

The overall semester-theme of the Aalborg Semester is Experience Design in Media Arts Cultures – from concept towards production. Each semester has a sub-theme that varies slightly from year to year supporting the translation of the semester-theme into the overall progression of the MediaAC program: (Kohort #1, 2016) Speculative Design and Possible Futures; (Kohort #2, 2017) Post-Digital Archives; and (Kohort #3, 2018) Politics of the Machine / Archive Futures.

The Aalborg Semester culminates in a Semester Exhibition where the students showcase their projects and frame and reflect on their practice-based academic processes. Each Semester Exhibition is presented on a unique website and those from 2016 and 2017 can be seen and visited below – alongside the website presenting the conference and exhibition in May 2018:

FØREIGN OBJECTS – Student Exhibition 2016

TIME MATTERS: STUDENT EXHIBITION 2017

POLITICS OF THE MACHINES: ART AND AFTER 2018 – Conference and student exhibition

The Team

The Aalborg Semester is coordinated by Morten Søndergaard, who is also co-founder of the program (with Oliver Grau and Wendy Coones) and member of the Consortium Board. The teaching on the Aalborg Semester is conducted by a strong international core-team of experts within their fields: Dr. Associate Professor Elizabeth Jochum, Dr. Obel Professor Palle Dahlstedt, M.sc. Head of Hum Lab Sebastian Bülow, and Dr. Associate Professor Morten Søndergaard. Furthermore, a number of visiting expert researchers and lecturers within the field are invited to the Aalborg Semester, including: Christa Sommerer (AU), Laura Beloff (FIN), Constant (BE), Chris Salter (CAN), Peter-Paul Verbeek (NL), Andreas Broeckmann (D), Ken Rinaldo (US) amongst others.

All photographs on this page by Morten Søndergaard